Cash payments or informal caregiver arrangements can affect your loved one’s ability to qualify for Medicaid upon going into a nursing home. Here’s what you need to know…

Giving Money to Family Can Jeopardize Medicaid Eligibility

When someone applies for Medicaid, the state looks back 5 years to see if any money was given away to the family. If so, the state imposes a penalty, or a delay of benefits. Sometimes money was clearly given to the family. Other times, it was used for the loved one, but the family can’t prove it. Check out the case below for a specific example.

Michigan Family’s Benefits Delayed – No Proof of Expenses

Betty Jensen was aging and suffering from dementia. She remained in her own home, but started needing more and more assistance to stay there. In May of 2011, her grandson (Jason) acted on her behalf and hired someone to be Ms. Jensen’s caregiver.

When he hired the caregiver, Jason did so informally without a written contract. For nearly a year, Jason paid the caregiver using almost $19,000 worth of Ms. Jensen’s assets. In March of 2012, Ms. Jensen’s dementia progressed to the point where she had to enter a nursing home.

In April of 2012, Jason applied for Medicaid benefits to help offset the cost of his grandmother’s care. While she was found eligible for benefits, the Department of Human Services (DHS) penalized her for “divesting” funds. They classified the payments to the caregiver (along with some other “gifts”) as “divestments.” That meant her Medicaid benefits were delayed for 7 months and 2 days.

Sadly, Ms. Jensen died before Medicaid started covering her nursing home expenses. (In Central Illinois, this delay would have cost Ms. Jensen and/or her family approximately $35,000!)

Her grandson appealed the ruling and lost, because the payments were made to the caregiver without a written agreement that should have been put into place before care began. The case was appealed several more times with varying results, but ultimately the courts sided with DHS, stating that an agreement with a caregiver needs to be written and official.

Caregiver Agreements in Illinois

The above case happened in Michigan, but the same thing could have easily happened in Illinois. The problem with paying cash for caregivers or hiring home help without any documentation is that there is no proof where the money went. Any “gifts” can cause a delay in benefits. And if a family member is taking out large amounts of cash or writing checks without documentation, the caseworkers may assume they are gifts.

The Complex World of Medicaid

Medicaid is our country’s largest healthcare benefits program, paying 70% of all nursing home bills in the US. One in six Americans are covered by it. The laws governing Medicaid are some of the most complex and confusing laws in existence. They are often nearly impossible to understand without highly experienced legal assistance. Without proper planning and advice, many people unnecessarily jeopardize their future care, their well-being, and the security of their family.

Medicaid Planning Can Help Even if You’re Already in Nursing Care

Medicaid planning (or what we here like to call Life Care Planning) ideally should be started when you are still able to make sound legal and financial decisions. (Somewhere around the age of 65.) That way you can still have control over what you want and how you want to live.

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Last week we gave you a secret test you could give a named helper (or potential helper) to see if they might be up to the task. But what sorts of things might you need help with? There are generally two categories…

Help With Finances

A recent National Institutes of Health study showed a decrease in decision-making skills between the ages of 56-85. We also know, statistically, that if you reach the age of 65 you will, on average, live 19.2 more years. Therefore, many of us will need help with complicated financial decisions that occur in the last few decades of life.

A Power of Attorney for finances will allow someone to help you pay bills, manage your investments and make financial decisions. This may sound very scary, but we help our clients make good choices about financial POAs on a daily basis. That’s why you see the word “Counselor” in our name.

Help With Healthcare Decisions

As you age, you may want input from others about your healthcare. We all know how complicated the medical care world is to navigate these days.

• Medical treatments – like chemo and radiation if you’re diagnosed with cancer. Sadly, doctors and nurses can’t always be relied upon to recommend the best course of action. It can be extremely helpful to have someone else listening to the options, the pros and cons, and then helping you make sense of the process.

• Surgery – whether it’s really needed or not.

• End of life decisions – do you want to be hooked up to machines? Do you want to spend your last days at home if at all possible?

• Where to live – should I downsize, stay put (age in place) or is there another alternative?

• How to get the best care – marketers are very savvy and they know that seniors are an easy target. It would be very helpful to have someone who can help you weed through all the “flash” of advertisements and get down to the real useful information so you can make informed choices.

How Edwards Group Can Help

We help families choose good helpers everyday. This is a difficult decision and one of the most important you’ll ever make. You don’t have to do it alone. We can guide you through the process of deciding who is best. While you’ll only do this once in your lifetime (maybe twice), we’ve helped hundreds of families since 2008. In that time, our firm has been solely dedicated to estate planning and elder law. We’ve seen A LOT and gained a lot of wisdom from the families we help on a daily basis. We can help you know what to do and what NOT to do.

Give us a call at 217-726-9200 and plan to attend an upcoming workshop today. If you attend one of our workshops, you’ll receive $200 off your initial meeting fee (if you schedule your appointment within 30 days of the workshop). We do this so you’ll know, before spending your hard earned money, if we’re the right firm for you. Attending a workshop makes the planning process easier and more effective.

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When a loved one is facing long-term care the first concern people have when they come to us for planning is how to get the best care possible. The second concern is how to pay for it.

Getting Good Care

People come to us worried about an aging family member or friend all the time. Their primary concerns are making sure their loved one is provided for, making sure they’re safe and getting the medical care that they need, while helping them have quality of life as much as possible. And these are the primary goals for our firm as well. We want to help decrease stress, increase quality of life and preserve family relationships during the last decades of life.

This is the issue that usually adds the most stress for families because they don’t know where to turn or where to get good advice about the options that are out there. The scary truth is that a lot of people are given wrong information and think there’s nothing that can be done if you can’t afford care on your own.

In reality, there are many planning tools that we can use to protect assets and gain benefits, even if someone is already in a nursing home. Our firm finds ways to maximize benefits available to pay for care, and protect some of the assets that mom hoped she would leave her family someday. Even if somebody’s been in a nursing home for months or years, it’s oftentimes not too late to get benefits to pay for care.

As long as somebody is writing personal checks to the nursing home every month, it is not too late to plan and save some of those assets.

The key is working with an experienced elder law attorney. Most “estate planning” attorneys just do what we call “death planning” (last will and testament, etc.), but elder law attorneys (like Edwards Group) have specialized training and expertise, and that means we deal with Medicaid and VA benefits every single day. We help you use the legal tools to their full advantage. And that means, in most cases, we can qualify someone for benefits faster than they ever expected, get more benefits than they ever expected, and in the end, protect much more of their life savings than they thought possible!

While it may seem like a good idea that things like Medicaid applications and Veterans benefit apps are accessible and do-it-yourself, as with many things relating to government, it’s really not that simple. There are many things that can go wrong when people apply for Medicaid without the help of an experienced guide.

Here are six reasons you should not apply for Medicaid without the help of an experienced elder law attorney:

1. You’ll lose all your hard-earned money.

Typically, when someone goes into a nursing home, the admissions people or case workers at the home tell people, “Spend all your money and then let us know when you’re ready to apply for Medicaid.” The best solution they can offer families is to “spend down” every dime of their hard-earned money on the astronomical price of nursing care! Planning with an experienced elder law attorney who is familiar with the ins and outs of Medicaid, oftentimes results in protecting 50% of the life savings so it can be used for later expenses or as a legacy for your family.

2. You’ll go crazy with the stress of the complex and bureaucratic process.

If you’ve been an adult for any amount of time then you know how difficult it can be to deal with government agencies. We have endless stories of families who get caught up in the paperwork, losing money and time with their aging loved ones while they “fight” the process trying to qualify and apply for help through Medicaid. (The picture above is three Medicaid applications before we sent them off for approval. It’s A LOT of paperwork!)

4. You may not qualify for benefits because of a simple error on the Medicaid application.

Again, we have a lot of stories about families who filled something out wrong, didn’t get something in on time or didn’t phrase something just right. We also have stories about the caseworkers themselves making mistakes that disqualified the families. These mistakes are just too costly.

5. Delays in the application could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

People who apply for Medicaid benefits on their own can take longer to jump through all the hoops which can delay the start of money to pay for care. On average, it takes us 6 to 8 weeks to get a Medicaid application filed, but it can take a year or longer to get approved. That timeline can be even longer when people try to do it on their own. We have 2.5 team members who are dedicated to this process alone, and they are experts at what they do. (Read about our Benefits Coordinator, Melissa Coulter.)

6. You won’t have anyone to turn to for help.

Filling out a Medicaid application is unlike anything you’ve ever done before and much more difficult than most people imagine. You don’t have to do it alone. Relying on the knowledge and expertise of a trustworthy elder law attorney who has been down this road hundreds of times before is invaluable.We know this because we have people come to us all the time who have tried to do a Medicaid application on their own and failed. We absolutely hate to see this. We also hear from grateful clients on a regular basis who are so glad they turned to us for help. (See a testimonial like this below.)

Medicaid Planning is Some of the Best Money You’ll Ever Spend

The cost of an elder law attorney who helps you plan and apply for Medicaid is more than offset by what you save in out-of-pocket nursing home costs. Without an attorney, all of your family’s money will inevitably go to the nursing home. With the help of an elder law attorney, even after legal fees, you’ll be left with more money than if you had done the application on your own. If the money is going to disappear anyway, why not use that money to pay an attorney who will guide your family through the stressful benefits process as quickly as possible, maximizing the money available to pay for care?

With good planning, you are more proactive; therefore you get much better results. (It’s a lot like using an accountant to make sure you don’t pay too many taxes.) Working with an elder law attorney insures that you get the best possible result instead of the worst possible result. And the worst possible result is what most people believe they HAVE TO DO when it comes to paying for nursing care — spend all their money until it’s gone. The best possible result means pursuing all the benefits that are legally available (like taking all the possible tax deductions when working on your taxes), and protecting your hard-earned money so it’s available to you and your family to use later on.

Here’s what one of our clients had to say about the process after it was done:

“I want to thank you again for all your hard work in helping my family. It has meant so much to have someone to answer questions, explain things and especially hold my hand through this amazing journey. I had moments where I wondered, ‘What am I doing spending [so much] of my parent’s money?’ Then I would wonder if we were ever going to get everything transferred, completed and filed. [When] I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I knew in my heart we had made the right decision. The professionalism shown by Edwards Group, which includes [Melissa] and Dave, has far exceeded my expectation. On behalf of my family, thank you again for all the phone calls, emails, texts, and especially the support. You have been amazing.” DC from Glendale, MO

If you’d like to continue learning more about Medicaid Planning and how an experienced elder law attorney can help make the process of applying for Medicaid faster and less stressful, be sure to check out our FREE Medicaid Planning e-course. You’ll receive several emails in succession telling you about the Medicaid application process while also giving you tangible steps you can take to begin the process. If your family is in a nursing home crisis situation, please call us right away at 217-726-9200. Our staff will be happy to assist you and answer your questions.

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We got another one of those calls the other day. It went something like this: “Mom has been in the nursing home for 3 years now and her money is gone. Is there anything we can do?” Our hearts sink when we hear this, because for this family, it’s too late for a lot of planning options.

How do you deal with a parent or spouse who can’t stay at home anymore? It’s one of the most stressful things a family can face. Few know what to do because they have never faced this issue before.

The key is the earlier we can plan, the more we can do, the more assets we can protect, and the easier we can make it on the family.

Generally, we see 4 different periods of planning. How much we can do declines as time passes.

1. Too late.When the money has all been spent on the nursing home over several years, it might be too late to protect assets. But we can help the family deal with all the mountains of paperwork and complete the Medicaid application. Oftentimes, our Medicaid team spends 40-50 hours completing a Medicaid application! How long would it take someone less experienced? We can help take the stress off of the family.

2. Not too late. “Mom’s Medicare coverage for nursing home care runs out in about 3 weeks. What do we do?” At this point, the family hasn’t spent any of mom’s money, but in 3 weeks they will start spending A LOT of her savings on the nursing home. (Around $6500 per month in Central Illinois.) We can still do a lot for this family. We call this a “crisis plan” and we move quickly to maximize Medicaid and VA benefits. Often we can still protect 50% or more of mom’s assets.

3. Protect your nest egg. What if mom is still living at home, but her health is going downhill? The family sees a point in the future when she will need care. So how do you plan ahead? One option is to create a special kind of trust, a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, to protect the nest egg. The nest egg includes the assets she doesn’t plan to need or spend during her life. Maybe we protect the house or some savings or investments, while still leaving enough for her to continue to live well. Whatever assets were placed in the trust will be 100% protected once 5 years have passed.

4. Best option. The absolute best option is to buy long-term care insurance when you are still young and healthy. Often it’s too expensive or not available once you hit retirement age. Those who buy good long-term care insurance can rest easy, knowing the insurance company will help pay for their future care, instead of it coming out of their family’s inheritance.

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It’s difficult to face, but statistics show that 70% of people who reach the age of 70 will need some sort of long-term care (like a nursing home). The need for long-term care can arise because of stroke, dementia or any number of health problems. When that happens, you and your family will have to figure out a way to pay for it. There are really only three ways to pay for long-term care:

1. Use your own assets or income to pay for care. You could use your savings, your pension, your Social Security, your IRA, your investments or sell your house to pay for care. Even the wealthiest of people generally have trouble doing this for any length of time because the average cost of nursing care in Central Illinois is around $6500 per month! With the average nursing home stay lasting nearly 2.5 years, that’s $195,000!

2. Let the insurance company pay for it. If you buy long-term care insurance, or buy a life insurance policy with a long-term care rider, when the time comes your family won’t have to use their own savings. If you can purchase long-term care insurance early enough, this can be a good option for helping pay for care. However, there will come a point in life when purchasing LTC insurance just isn’t an option.

3. Use benefits paid for by your taxes. Many people do not want to rely on government help as they age, yet 70% of nursing home residents rely on Medicaid to pay the exorbitant costs of care. Until something changes, this benefit will continue to play a vital role in making sure people get the care they need as they age. You’ve paid a lifetime of taxes. Why not use this benefit just like you use Medicare or Social Security? Another very important benefit in paying for long-term care is the Veteran’s Pension and Survivor’s Pension Programs (often called “Aid and Attendance”). This benefit is available to a wide range of Veterans who often do not even know about the program. (Only 28% of those eligible actually take advantage of the program.) It is a great help in providing in-home care or nursing care.

The key is to plan ahead as to which of these options you hope to use to pay for your care. The tragic family situations regarding long-term care happen when people don’t plan ahead and then are surprised or having an immediate crisis which results in a worst-case scenario of depleting their life savings.

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In a previous post, we talked about a growing segment of people who are aging alone without the help of their adult children (either because they don’t have children or their children live very far away). These seniors face unique challenges in their 70’s and 80’s. To read about those four challenges, click here. With proper planning, guided by an experienced elder law attorney who has faced these issues many times before, you can achieve peace of mind and have a plan in place if you do not have close family nearby.

7 Steps Every Senior Should Take if Aging Alone

1. Make a plan while you are still sharp (physically and mentally).

A study by the National Institutes of Health found decreased cognition and decision-making impairment begin around the age of 60. Research has also shown that the ability to make sound investment decisions sharply declines at 70. Because of this, it’s important to plan ahead.

2. Make sure your plan is a comprehensive plan and not just a will.

An effective Life Care Plan should include documents like Powers of Attorney (for health and finances), advanced directives for end of life medical issues, etc. It should also address questions such as how will you pay for long-term care, how do you want care decisions to be made, and do you want to stay at home if at all possible?

3. Set up structures to protect yourself.

With the help of an experienced elder law attorney, you should anticipate future issues and how you want them handled. (For instance, if you don’t have kids, consider a professional helper such as an attorney, CPA or bank to handle your finances.)

4. Be open to changing your living arrangements.

If you’re willing to alter your living arrangements earlier on, then you’ll be able to make changes on your own terms, deciding what’s most important to you. If you wait until crisis strikes, others may have to dictate where you go, or your medical issues may dictate where you have to live.

If you start to become isolated in your house, having difficulty taking medicine or eating properly, there needs to be a fail-safe in place so that you don’t suffer and linger too long in the house on your own.

In the last few decades of life things can change rapidly. That’s why a plan with ongoing maintenance is especially helpful. Crafting a flexible plan, through an attorney you trust, insures that adjustments can be made as circumstances change.

6. Gather a list of contacts who can help you.

Identify what tasks you need help with (cooking, cleaning, yard work, etc.) and then match the tasks with people (friends, neighbors, nieces, nephews, church members) who might be able to help you with those specific jobs.

7. Find local resources to help.

There are several good resources that can help seniors, or their distant children, get the help they need.

Aging is not something any of us wants to think about, but by thinking and planning ahead, you can save yourself a lot of grief, stress, dignity and money.

If you are facing the prospect of aging alone and are concerned that you don’t have an adequate plan in place, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 217-726-9200. We are always happy to help in anyway that we can!

There’s a growing segment of people who are aging without the help of their adult children (either because they don’t have children or because their children live far away). Read on to learn more about the challenges this group faces.

People are living longer than ever before in history. People are having less children. And those children often live out of town or in other states. Because of all these factors, 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 65 are at risk of becoming “elder orphans.”

Many don’t like this term. “I’ve lived just fine on my own nearly all my life!” However, it is a quick and clear way to describe a growing number of people who are getting older without the immediate support of close family. And it is a HUGE challenge – one our firm is seeing more and more often.

4 Challenges of Aging Alone

It used to be that a will was an adequate estate plan for most people, but a will only works after a person’s death. A will cannot help with the challenges that present themselves when a person is in their 70’s and 80’s. And if that person does not have children, or has children halfway across the country, then the challenges of the last two decades of life can make things even harder.

So what are 4 important things to consider if you find yourself in this situation?

1. Who’s gonna be in charge?

Of course, you would like the answer to be yourself, but what happens if you have a stroke, start to experience the signs of dementia or develop cancer? When the time comes (and it will come for the vast majority of people), who will pay your bills for you? Who will help get you to doctor visits or treatments? Who will help you get groceries or cook? Read about choosing good helpers here.

2. Who will even know if you need help?

Oftentimes, we don’t recognize the need for help in our own lives. More often than not, at our firm, it is the adult children who notice that their parents need help. It is nearly impossible to notice a slow decline in your own life without someone else’s perspective.

3. What if you get help from all the wrong places?

Sadly, there are more ways to scam seniors than ever before. Dishonest caregivers have always been able to steal money, change the will, etc. but now there are mail order scams, and tech scams on iPads or via email. It is really hard to know who to trust (read about 7 Types of Helpers to Watch Out For here), which brings us to the next challenge…

4. What if you reject good advice because you don’t know who to trust?

While it is really hard to know who to trust, there are still some really good, honest people out there who are passionate about helping seniors. We work with these types of advisors everyday. They are out there, but if you’re on your own, how will you know if you can trust them?

Aging is not something any of us wants to think about, but by thinking and planning ahead, you can save yourself a lot of grief, stress, dignity and money.

If you are facing the prospect of aging alone and are concerned that you don’t have an adequate plan in place, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 217-726-9200. We are always happy to help in anyway that we can!

There are financial planners out there who hold themselves as VA planners offering “free” VA benefit advice, but their “free” advice often comes with a hidden price.

Non-attorney Planning Tactics Can Backfire

David and Chris were in Atlanta a few months ago at the Academy of VA Pension Planners. It’s one of many professional organizations that David belongs to in order to make sure the firm serves our clients better than anyone else. The AVAPP solely focuses on helping Veterans, and their families, get the benefits they earned in service to their country.

Did you know that only 28% of Veterans who qualify use their benefits? And as one of the only law firms in Central Illinois to be accredited by the VA, we want to make sure that everyone who has served our country gets to age with dignity and receive the best care possible.

There are some financial planners who hold themselves out as VA planners offering “free” VA benefit advice. Some are very knowledgeable, but there are some problems with the “free” advice that you need to watch out for.

5 Tactics that Non-attorney VA Planners Use

1. Transferring the house to the kids

Maximizing VA benefits sometimes means rearranging assets. One mistake we have seen is transferring a house to the children. While this will help work for VA benefits (allowing the house to be sold without messing up benefits), there are problems with this strategy. One problem is when the house is later sold, the kids will pay capital gains taxes that could have been avoided. By putting the house in a Veterans Asset Protection Trust, we could get the VA benefits but also avoid the capital gains tax later.

2. IRAs and taxes

Because the VA has asset limits, sometimes IRA accounts must be moved to qualify for benefits. Without proper tax planning, some families incur a huge tax bill that could have been avoided. Instead, working with an experienced attorney can help you consider all the planning options and the tax impact.

3. Annuities with long surrender charges

Often, the “free” VA advice comes with a recommendation to tie up assets in an annuity with long surrender periods. Is anything really “free” in this world? Unfortunately, some families do not realize that the VA financial planner they are relying on is ultimately trying to sell them costly and expensive annuities that tie up their assets far into the future. (This is how the financial planner makes his living.) Instead, a Veterans Asset Protection Trust can help you protect and arrange assets, while allowing your family free access to the investments held in the trust. You need to consider all of the legal and financial tools to see which is best. Unfortunately, non-attorneys often ignore legal tools, such as trusts, even though they may be the best option to help qualify for benefits.

4. Transferring assets to children

Some non-attorney planners transfer assets to the kids so the client can get VA benefits. So, what is the problem with that? If the client needs more care down the road, the funds may have already been spent by the kids. Plus, the gift could keep them from qualifying for Medicaid. (And 70% of nursing home residents use Medicaid to pay for their care.) Transfers of assets must consider both the current goal (VA benefits) and future needs (such as Medicaid benefits to pay for nursing care). By working with an attorney experienced in both VA and Medicaid planning, you can have a flexible plan that considers future health needs.

5. Messing up wishes

Another strategy that non-attorney planners use that can backfire is to transfer the parent’s money to one child in order to qualify for VA benefits. However, that strategy then changes the entire estate plan because one child legally ends up with all the money (unless they voluntarily share it with their siblings, and sadly, we’re experienced enough to know this happens much less often than you think). Instead, once again, the Veterans Asset Protection Trust is a great tool to preserve your wishes after death, but still help you qualify for VA benefits now.

Call 217-726-9200 if you have any questions at all. We will be more than happy to talk with you.

As you age, or as you complete your estate plan, you’ll need to name different kinds of “helpers” who will carry out your plan when the time comes. These helpers are officially known by different names depending on the job they’re given. They can be known as trustee, executor, power of attorney or guardian, but no matter what their legal name is, their job is to act for you when you can’t act for yourself. This can happen in cases of stroke or other debilitating illnesses as you age, or after a death. It’s very important you choose the right person.

Our founding attorney, David Edwards, has been in the estate planning field for almost two decades now. When you’re that experienced, you start to notice trends. Here are some kinds of helpers David has seen over the years – helpers you may want to avoid if you have any of these “types” in your family:

1. The Do-Nothing – Mom died 2 years ago, but her house is still sitting empty, crumbling. Tax bills and utilities eat up the estate, while the rest of the family waits. He says, “I’ll get to it soon.”

2. The Messy One – In grade school, this person couldn’t find her homework. As a teenager? Clothes piled a foot deep in her bedroom. As an adult? She’s often late to appointments (if she remembers them at all). And finances? Her checkbook has never been balanced, and she gets monthly overdraft notices. Now she’s been named a trustee…

3. The Fighter – His competitive spirit was great while playing sports in high school. But it has not worked out so well with his family or his marriage. Being right is more important than anything else. And now, as a trustee, he gets to decide what’s “right.” There’s no talking to him about it, because it’s his job, and it’s “none of your business how I do it.”

4. The Romantic – “I’m just not ready to sell grandpa’s car or fishing cabin yet.” This trustee lets her emotions get in the way of the job – which is to sell or distribute trust assets. And it’s not just the car and cabin – what about personal property? How do you sort out or (gasp!) even throw stuff away? “It’s just too hard. I can’t do it yet.”

5. The Bossy One – The parents named Junior and Sissy as co-trustees, wanting both of them to have a say and to work together. But big brother is used to being in charge and taking over. He won’t even talk to his sister about what is going on. “If you don’t like it, go get a lawyer… I don’t care if we spend the entire estate on legal fees!” Bossy brother pushes and threatens, leading the more reasonable sister to let him have his way. “It’s just not worth it to try to fight.”

6. The Stress Ball – She’s always running here and there, never any time to sit and talk about the estate. IF you get her on the phone she says, “Sorry. Can’t talk now. Can I call you back?” She means to do her job as trustee, but she can’t find time for the things in her own life, much less this added duty. The family isn’t sure what to do – take legal action or just wait a little longer.

7. The Broke One – His ends never seem to meet, and he’s always in financial crisis. Bill collectors call all the time. Now he’s named as a trustee and gets a checkbook showing a nice balance. It’s easy to rationalize – “I’ll just take some of my inheritance early, to get past this crisis.” But then he needs a little more and a little more. As time passes, the family wonders what has happened to their parents’ money.

We understand that this can be a very daunting task. As always, we are here to help you create an effective estate plan. You don’t have to do it alone. We’ll guide you along every step of the way. Give us a call at 217-726-9200 to get started, or attend one of our FREE workshops. We have two to choose from:

http://edwardsgroupllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bossy-boy-web-version.jpeg10001500edwardsadminhttp://edwardsgroupllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/USE-Logo-estate-planning-280x100.pngedwardsadmin2015-04-28 18:14:512016-11-21 17:24:227 Types of "Helpers" You Need to Watch Out For